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(4)Bowser vs (2)Kirby 2018
Ulti's Analysis Every contest there's a match or two I feel is easy as piss to call, get it right, and I stare in shock at Board 8's consensus being almost entirely the other way on it. This was that match for Character Battle X. I spent all of 5 seconds thinking about this one. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2117-dream-division-final-kirby-vs-bowser They had a match in 2005 where Bowser won 52-48. Close by percentage, but Kirby never threatened to actually win the match. Fast forward to today, and there was no actual reason for that gap to close. If anything, Bowser had reasons to widen it. Let's start with Kirby. You know all those arguments made by very smart people about how the Pokemon characters were fraudulent? How they overform in 3/4ways and such? All of those same arguments apply to Kirby. Kirby isn't a fraud or anything, but he has even more reason to overperform in that style of poll than Pokemon characters, because no one actually cares about Kirby's games. He is liked because of character design, being cute, being an easy character to emoticon on forums HUGS!!!! <(^_^)>, and Smash Brothers. yoblazer later in this contest made a fabulous point about Samus being the #1 example of Smash Bros boosting in these contests. I actually think it's Kirby. If Smash Bros never happens, Samus still has Super Metroid and the Prime series to at least be a midcarder. What does Kirby have? Subpar platformers and Kirby Super Star? I love Kirby's Dream Land for the Game Boy and Kirby's Adventure for the NES, but those are way too old to matter for him on this site. Now look at Bowser, whose obvious comp is Ganon. Zelda fans don't exactly love Ganon. They like him, but he's just kind of.... there. He has ugly character design and we see the fans bail on him in close matches. But Bowser? Bowser means a hell of a lot more to Mario fans than Ganon does to Zelda fans. Mario's fanbase loves Bowser. He looks cool as shit, like a dragon crossed with a snapping turtle. He has those amazing spots in the early games, his hilarity in the Mario RPG games, even more amazing spots in the 3D platformer games, he too has the Smash Bros effect like Kirby does, and oh by the way, Bowsette happened before this contest. Kirby has never once had a meme boost him the way Bowsette helped the big man out this year. I make some 'no doubt in my mind' bad calls all the time, like L-Block > Kefka or Magus in 2005, and you guys are welcome to make fun of me all you want for those, but I have to puff my chest out a little when I'm on the right side of these things now and again. I had zero doubt Bowser was winning this, and it took all of 10 minutes for this match to be over. In 2005, Kirby put up a fight for about 20 minutes before getting worked. This year, he lasted 15 minutes and ended up losing worse than last time. Kirby is simply not on Bowser's level, for the reasons outlined here. Simple as that, and Bowser is the better character anyway. Kirby is a one trick pony. Yeah I said it. I like the little guy, but he's no Bowser and he frankly falls behind a lot of other characters as well. Kirby isn't even the coolest guy in his own series. Meta Knight and King Dedede take those honors. Bowser is absolutely in the discussion for coolest Mario character. The coolest thing Kirby was ever involved with, and I am 100% convinced this was intentional, was this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXzg0D-cKds I say intentional because you cannot convince me Snoop didn't get high as fuck while playing a Kirby game when making that song. There's just no way it lines up that perfectly otherwise. Oh, and I'd like to thank me for just being me at all times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZqrE50OOzY Safer777's Analysis So before the contest Kirby was the favorite. And as the contest went on Kirby became the heavy favorite. Also all the Crew picked Kirby to win. There is always a crazy person that picks the other guy in most matches but not here. So of course Bowser won! What? How could that have happened? Why almost everyone had Kirby winning easily? The answer is...I don't know! Someone made a post based on x-stats for every year and every year Bowser was above Kirby. Every year! Damn! I guess people thought that since Charizard and 2B did okay on Bowser Kirby would beat him. But here is the thing. Kirby has defeated weaker opponents and that made him looking good. So that is probably why Kirby was considered the heavy favorite. So when the match started the Nintendo Hierarchy came into play. What is this thing? Basically you like Nintendo. So you vote for these characters of course. But the characters from the more popular series beat the ones from the least popular. So when you have a character from the Mario series and a character from the Kirby series you will vote for the one from the Mario series because well that is the one you like better. Or I may be wrong here. So yeah. This is what I believe at least. Also another villain won a division too! If Sephiroth manages to win that would mean that the 3 strongest villains will be winning divisions. Well we shall see. Still awesome win for Bowser. Turtle/Dragon/Dinosaur/Ox(?) hybrids man! Also this match had almost the same percentage as the other match and they both were going at the same time and in both matches hybrids won! Something is going on here I tell you! But seriously Bowser defied(Board 8)expectations too. That is always good. Tsunami's Analysis When a greater percentage of Gurus get a match correct than Oracles, you know we've screwed up somewhere along the line. Bowser has always been one of the strongest midcarders; by raw votes, his match with Snake in 2005 was still the closest 1v1 between a Noble Niner and a non-Noble Niner (though that would obviously change this year because of the horrible vote totals), closer than even Samus-Tifa 2006. He'd beaten Kirby before, during that same 2005 season. Now, Kirby had established quite a resume since then as well, so Bowser was only a slight favorite there--69 to 60, with 28 of the remaining 31 Gurus picking Charizard. But in the Oracle, which was made with the additional "knowledge" of the first three rounds? Kirby received 80% of Oracle predictions. But it's a shame it even came to that. I love both of these characters, and if one of them had been in Division 3 or 6 instead, that'd be great. Preferably Division 3, if it's Kirby who was moved; for someone who hadn't faced any Noble Niners until 2008, Kirby sure has had a lot of matches with Sonic. Why do I love them so much? For Bowser, it's mostly the more recent games. The RPGs were what allowed Bowser to really show his character--I was planning on spamming SMRPG and BIS quotes any time Bowser did anything good in his matches with Crono, but he never really did--but it's since carried over into the main games. A common criticism of video game leads is that their personalities are very generic, a necessary evil because they're supposed to represent the player. Think Mario, Link, Crono, and especially Red, who Game Freak has decided shall forever remain silent even when not the protagonist. The villains are not bound by this restriction, so they get all the good lines. Remember all the hype surrounding Magus in 2003? It's because Magus actually had a character, so he was thought to be much more popular within the fanbase than Crono. Kirby, on the other hand, appears at first to be one of those low-characterization leads, and in some ways he is, but it's more accurate to say that his characterization is a child-like simplicity. Kirby has faced all sorts of cosmic horrors, and he still maintains his cheerful demeanor, waving and dancing and constantly smiling (no matter how much American box art tries to hide this last fact). We could all learn a lot from Kirby. Category:2018 Contest Matches